Gone
by ulstergirl
Summary: Duncan looks back over the past few years. VD. Follows immediately after Donut Run.
1. Chapter 1

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks the baby is theirs.

A month after Shelly Pomeroy's party, he waited for it. Waited for Veronica with her newly short hair to grab him and pull him into a dusty corner or behind the bleachers, and hiss words like paternity and responsibility and financial support to him. He took alternate routes to class so he couldn't catch her eye, and when they were in sight of each other his palms were always damp, his skin singing with anticipation. The month stretched to two, then three; by the summer she remained slender as ever. School started again and they were in journalism together and she was indifferent, her belly flat, no dark circles under her eyes bespeaking of late nights wondering about him.

He never admitted, not even to himself, how much that did hurt. As though she didn't want to acknowledge at all what had happened between them that night. He caught the occasional glance, but that was all.

When he dreamed about it, there was reconciliation and peace and her standing at a window, looking out to the sea and smiling, an infant in her arms. Her hair was long and Lilly was still alive and his mother had never called him to the table for that terrible conversation, the one that had left him weak and nauseated and disgusted with himself.

But it all faded. He started a new journal on his computer. He took more assignments for the newspaper. He ran for class president. He was civil to the girl whose heart he had broken, and who had broken his heart in return.

And he fell for Meg Manning.

He never asked himself why it was another cheerleader with long blonde hair. He never let himself think about it. Meg was a wonderful girlfriend; his parents liked her, her parents tolerated him, and she didn't dig too deeply into the tangled misery that was his past. Meg knew he'd loved Veronica, but everyone did. What she didn't know was that, during the string of relationships he'd carried on after breaking up with Veronica, those persistent dreams had never stopped. Meg didn't know that he had probably killed one sister in a blind rage and deflowered the other during a drunken party. When he was with Meg, none of those things seemed to matter anymore. He could start fresh. And if Veronica never wanted to acknowledge that they'd had sex that night, then neither would he.

Which is why it was a total surprise to him, the night he saw Veronica kissing Logan, that he proceeded to walk out to his SUV and smash the driver's door in with a shovel. Through that same choking rage he distantly heard Meg say, hurt in her voice, that he was still in love with Veronica. Despite everything, despite all his attempts to put her out of his mind, all the promises he'd made to Meg, the hours they had managed to steal in each other's arms. None of it mattered anymore.

He wanted her still.

It made him sick and angry and disgusted with himself. He and Meg fought constantly. She was convinced she was right and he could never admit that she was.

Then came the terrible night when they saw the tapes and Veronica told him that the rights she had signed away weren't worth the billions he'd thought they were, that she wasn't his sister.

Everything came back, that night as he watched the police arrest his father, Veronica's father on a stretcher and Aaron passed out cold in the middle of the road and Veronica herself, still in her ridiculous waitressing outfit, her face flushed with tears as she climbed into the back of an ambulance.

They had lied, about so many things. He hadn't killed Lilly, although his parents had been willing to stake Abel Koontz's life on the belief that he had. There had never been any incest.

And Veronica had never acknowledged their one night together because she'd never known it had happened.

"I do still love her," he told Meg, finally. "And it's unfair to both of us to keep going this way. We aren't happy." He looked down at his hands and sighed.

Her face had gone ashen-pale. "I thought you loved me," she said. "I thought..." She raised her hands in a vague hopeless gesture. "Remember that day on the beach? You told me you were over her. Have you been seeing her again?"

Duncan shook his head. "I haven't. Meg, I swear, I'm not breaking up with you to be with her."

He had never seen such fire in her eyes. "Yes you are," she said softly. Bitter. "I hope she's worth it."


	2. Chapter 2

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

Veronica was gone. Lilly and Duncan watched her go, the same look of longing on their faces. She stayed as long as she could, but everything was so dangerous now. One mistake and they would see each other through Plexiglas and his child would be lost to him forever.

Veronica had left her laptop for him to use. He pulled it open and logged onto the Kane Software mainframe.

They hadn't been able to find a way to communicate, once he was across the border. Mail could be compromised, they were already sure her phone was tapped. Email accounts could be watched. They had to be careful, so careful.

He'd almost asked her to run away with him. The words had been on his lips, as they made their painstaking plans, the voice recordings, the trip to buy the boat. Every time their gazes met, every time he watched her hold Lilly in her arms. He thought again of the image of her, the one from his dreams. It wouldn't be so difficult. Safe passage and a life on the run for three instead of two.

But she wasn't meant for that life. Lilly was his responsibility. Veronica was an angel for doing as much for her as she had. It would break his heart to leave her behind, but he would.

Not without a present, though.

Veronica, like everyone else in America, had Kane streaming video software installed on her computer, automatically updating, handling her internet content. If her computer was seized in a search, no one would give it a second thought. Duncan worked his way through subdirectories and text files. Lilly cried for a bottle and he took her into his arms, rocked her gently, his mind racing.

A cookie.

Another fortune cookie.

He worked while Lilly had her bottles, her glowing eyes staring up into his; he slept when she did, fitfully, working between. He found the email she had used when the software was installed, and linked the cookie so it would download to her and only her, the next time she upgraded.

When he blinked awake the next morning Veronica was standing over them. Lilly was cuddled close to his chest, her hand wrapped around one of his fingers. She was happy to see her adopted mother, though. Veronica picked her up, and the expression on her face was almost painful to see. Dark rings under her eyes. She'd slept as little as he had.

"Later today," she whispered. "It'll be later."

He nodded, but she didn't glance up to meet his eyes. She sniffed and Lilly took Veronica's finger in her tiny fist and Duncan's heart rose in his throat. They could do this. If he asked her, if he could find the words to ask her.

Veronica reached up and swiped gently at her eyes. "Okay," she said, and handed Lilly back to Duncan. "Okay. We can do this."

"Yeah," he said faintly, and the moment was gone.

They didn't have enough time. They never had enough time. He'd known, after the first step they took, that there was no going back, but there wasn't any time to blow off the rest of the world and spend a weekend wrapped in each other's arms on a beach somewhere. No candlelight and roses for them. No time to say a tenth of what he needed to say to her. She was amazing, the most amazing person he'd ever meet, and he owed her more than he could ever repay.

After one last fierce hug she was crying and pushing him away and he had to resist the urge to just pull her down with him and hold her and never, ever let her go again.

"I love you."

"Always."

A thousand miles away, he was on his third name and Astrid was in a red wig. The hotel ice machine wasn't working. The heat was intolerable, his beard had bypassed stubbly in favor of full, and his Spanish was more than passable.

He found an internet cafe in the next city. While Astrid stocked up on formula and diapers, he dropped a handful of pesos on the counter and signed on.

The empty screen blinked at him, and he began to type.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think she's ours.


End file.
